Re: Plea for help from PowerMac Open Firmware gurus -- Testing new oldworld pmac miboot 2.6 floppies
On Fri, 2004-08-20 at 02:24, Sven Luther wrote:
> On Fri, Aug 20, 2004 at 01:54:09AM -0400, Rick Thomas wrote:
> >
> > On Thursday, August 19, 2004, at 12:08 PM, Rick Thomas wrote:
> >
> > >
> > >On Thursday, August 19, 2004, at 05:00 AM, Sven Luther wrote:
> > >>
> > >>>happy floppy disk reading noises. However, the noises eventually
> > >>>stopped and a red "X" appeared over the TuxMac. Then nothing. I
> > >>>had to
> > >>>manually eject the floppy from the drive.
> > >>
> > >>What we need would be a way to get a log of it or something.
> > >
> > >I'll try booting from open-firmware directly on a serial console.
> > >It may take a couple of trys. I've never done that before on a
> > >Mac (On a Sun/sparc machine, it's standard operating procedure,
> > >and I've got lots of experience with Suns -- so it's not
> > >completely unexplored teritory!) Maybe there will be some
> > >console messages that will be helpful.
> >
> > Well... Try one gives no help.
> >
> > I booted my PowerMac 6500 with "Cmd-Opt-O-F" keys, while watching
> > the 6500's "modem" serial port on another machine running MacOS-9
> > with MacKermit at 38400 bps. I found myself talking to the Open
> > Firmware monitor on the 6500, as expected. I was able to do a
> > couple of the exercises in Apple Tech Note 1061 ("Fundamentals of
> > Open Firmware, part I: The User Interface"). I was feeling
> > encouraged... so I typed "boot" with the floppy disk in the drive.
> > It read the floppy. Nothing appeared on the serial console.
> > Peeking at the monitor on the 6500, all I saw there was a black
> > screen. Eventually, the floppy reading noises stopped, but still
> > nothing on the serial console and nothing on the 6500's monitor. I
> > waited a while. No change.
>
> You have to give the kernel the console=ttyS1,<speed> option so the console
> goes to serial log. I don't know how this is done for a miboot floppy though.
>
> > I've been warned by someone at work that the Linux Kernel may
> > change the console's bit-rate to either 19200 or 9600 bits/sec.
> > And once the reading noises stop, it does seem that the console has
> > switched to 19200, because at that speed, things I type on it are
> > echoed coherently -- at any other speed, things I type are
> > garbled. But all it does is echo what I type. It does nothing
> > useful that I can see. In particular, there are no error or
> > debug/progress messages of any kind.
>
> See above.
>
> > Sigh!
> >
> > Is there some kind of a boot-time parameter that one can set to
> > tell the Linux Kernel to print verbose debugging progress messages
> > on the serial console?
>
> Yes. I do : boot vmlinuz console=ttyS01,115200n8 for example, but you would
> both have to identify the actyal ttyS and the speed (19200) and the the way to
> tell the kernel about that.
>
> > While I'm asking, does anyone know how to tell the Macintosh Open
> > Firmware monitor to set the terminal speed. I'm thinking that if
> > the Linux Kernel wants 19200, then it would be a good idea to be
> > talking to the Open Firmware at the same speed, so things don't get
> > lost in the switch-over.
>
> Best is to adapt the linux kernel serial log to the OF set value though.
Well... on the beige G3, I booted into Open Firmware with the
"ofonlyboot" floppy in the drive. The G3 comes up with console
input/output being keyboard/screen. From another Mac running MacOS-9, I
connected with MacKermit to the G3's modem port (which is normally
"/dev/ttyS0" under Linux)
At the G3's console, I typed "boot console=ttyS0<return>". The floppy
drive made reading noises, and the "tuxMac" icon appeared on the G3's
screen. Nothing happened at this point on the Kermit serial port --
there was no response when I type things at it over the serial port.
After a while the floppy stopped making noises and a red "X" appeared
over the tuxMac icon. Still no messages on the serial port, but now it
at least will echo what I type at it. No response other than echos,
though. It seems that I'm not talking to a live kernel.
Does any one have a clue what the red "X" means?
It appears that the "console=ttyS0" option is being noticed (at least
that's how I interpret the fact that it switched from no-echo to echo at
the point where the red "X" appeared...) So I could put other boot-time
options there as well. Is there a "verbose" option I can try?
Rick
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